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11th August was a big day, BCBS's driver agreed to use his hoist to get all the steels for the roof in place. It was a bit of a stretch which required about six of us to man handle the biggest beams into position from the furthest point the hoist could reach.
The main beam was quite scary, the beam was very heavy, the walls rocked alarmingly, the scaffolding a bit rickety and the crane could not quite reach the apex so it was all a bit fraught.
Once the steel beams were in it did not take long to get the rafters in place to form the roof. The complicated roof arrangement seemed unnecessary so I decided to call the council planning people to see if we could re-configure it.
Much to my surprise they came back very quickly to say the drawing I submitted is not what was agreed for planning permission.
It seems Nigel the architect had raised the roof already without getting permission. This put me on the back foot and in the end we agreed to leave it as we have built it and I had to apply for a change so it was approved. They would not let us raise it any further which is a shame.
The slates fixed onto the front of the house were a mixture of old ones which we saved and new, probably 50% of each.
On the rear the plans specified a steel roof, we were never really convinced that this would look good so investigated the alternatives. Eventually we settled on a zinc roof, this was double the cost (£8k rather than £4k) but a million times nicer and of course it won't rust.
The glass section was more a of a problem. In the end we settled on Salop Glass, probably the biggest mistake we made during the build. Untill the zinc and glass could be delivered the back was covered in tarpulins.
The windows were hand made by Pete, Ian and Tigers brother. It seems all of the Greens are in the building trade.
While the boys were building the roof I laid all the underfloor heating pipes. This was an interesting exercise as none of us had ever installed underfloor heating before. On the ground floor the pipes were laid on top of the insulation layer so they would be encased in the screed which was soon to be laid. Upstairs I fitted insulation board between the joists, ran the pipes on top of these and then put a light sand cement mix over the top. All this was based on some excellent instructions from the Underfloor Heating Company. The biggest problem was stopping Joe and particularly Craig, from treading on the pipes, a leak would have been a disaster.
Above you can see the bathroom heating pipes, the waste pipes and two wooden "blanks" which I made so as to create two holes in the screed for the shower trays.
Once the pipes were in place the screed was poured over the ground floor and then the wooden frame constructed to dry line the walls and provide partitions between the rooms. At the same time I ran in all the electrical wiring before the insulation panels were fitted between the timbers. We spent over £6,000 on insulation board even though a lot of them were seconds. The wall between the bedroom and the hall is block, all the others are wood partions.
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